Canterbury or Shrewsbury brawn is a much better dish.

_Apicius_.--If you had some meats that we wanted, yet our cookery must
have been greatly superior to yours. Our cooks were so excellent that
they could give to hog's flesh the taste of all other meats.

_Darteneuf_.--I should never have endured their imitations. You might as
easily have imposed on a good connoisseur in painting the copy of a fine
picture for the original. Our cooks, on the contrary, give to all other
meats, and even to some kinds of fish, a rich flavour of bacon without
destroying that which makes the distinction of one from another. It does
not appear to me that essence of hams was ever known to the ancients. We
have a hundred ragouts, the composition of which surpasses all
description. Had yours been as good, you could not have lain indolently
lolling upon couches while you were eating. They would have made you sit
up and mind your business. Then you had a strange custom of hearing
things read to you while you were at supper. This demonstrates that you
were not so well entertained as we are with our meat. When I was at
table, I neither heard, nor saw, nor spoke; I only tasted. But the worst
of all is that, in the utmost perfection of your luxury, you had no wine
to be named with claret, Burgundy, champagne, old hock, or Tokay. You
boasted much of your Falernum, but I have tasted the Lachrymae Christi
and other wines of that coast, not one of which would I have drunk above
a glass or two of if you would have given me the Kingdom of Naples. I
have read that you boiled your wines and mixed water with them, which is
sufficient evidence that in themselves they were not fit to drink.

_Apicius_.--I am afraid you do really excel us in wines; not to mention
your beer, your cider, and your perry, of all which I have heard great
fame from your countrymen, and their report has been confirmed by the
testimony of their neighbours who have travelled into England. Wonderful
things have been also said to me of an English liquor called punch.

_Darteneuf_.--Ay, to have died without tasting that is miserable indeed!
There is rum punch and arrack punch! It is difficult to say which is
best, but Jupiter would have given his nectar for either of them, upon my
word and honour.

_Apicius_.--The thought of them puts me into a fever with thirst.

_Darteneuf_.--Those incomparable liquors are brought to us from the East
and West Indies, of the first of wh